Although Harry is a reasonable dancer in this company the marks last night were, once again, OTT.
His quickstep was never a TEN in this world.Craig was correct about his foot.
I think old Len gave him 10 to make up for underscoring him previously due to Len's umbrage at Aliona saying she didn't take notice of the judges.
Aleesha always overmarks and Bruno is just ridiculous when it comes to the male dancers.

Watch James' reaction to Harry's performance after they finish. He also agreed with the judges'marks. James is a pro who says it as it is and he agreed with the marks. The pros know who is overmarked/undermarked. Both Brendan and James openly show how they feel about marks.

It's all relative.
If other dances scored 9 last night, Harry's had to be a 10.

do we really need another thread discussing this?

As soon as I saw James' reaction I knew 10s were on their way. I didn't particularly agree with him though. I thought Len was a bit over generous. A 9 from him would have been sufficient enough but I also think that maybe scoring this dance a 10 may also be an excuse to mark him down a point or two should his subsequent dances not match his Quickstep. That may be his personal lesson to Aliona though and shouldn't reflect on Harry which is a shame. He did the same with Artem last year didn't he particularly with the American Smooth where he wittered on and on about how he was judging it as a Foxtrot AS as he believed most of the steps to be taken from a Foxtrot but that most of the content was poor because it was out of hold a lot and he believed Artem to be trying to please the audience more than the judges (which Bruno and Alesha took real offence by). I really hope Harry's dances do match the Quickstep because if they don't I think it may just resort back to Len having a go at Aliona and effectively placing the trophy in their hands when it may be deserved elsewhere.

Precisely.

A ten should be as good as it gets.In an ideal world it would represent perfection but of course we cannot have that in this contest.
I don't see how watching James' face can indicate that he thinks it a ten, and in any case, who knows what's genuine on a reaction scripted show.They do play to the camera a lot.
I believe that Chelsee is a better dancer than Harry but she doesn't seem to "sell" the dance to the judges as good as Harry does.

I dont see why people are getting so up in arms about the scores.

At the end of the day, its not the scores that are important, its the rankings. Harry was top of the leader board, and he deserved to be. If others got a 9, then yes he deserved a 10, as it was a mark better than the next one.

I would also say that the score followed the usual pattern of Craig being one mark below Len, and the other three being the same.

One thing i have found if anything is that Craig seems to slightly over mark Jason (Didnt he give the same score to Jason and Harry). But again its the overal position that matters, not the individual marks, and GENERALLY this year i thought the placings have been right.

When Tess read out the score and mentioned the 3 10's James could be heard saying emphaticly "dessereved" and Harry turned round and thanked him. Anton seemed over the moon with scores too and say what you want about him Anton knows a good ballroom dance when he sees it

Would at least one of the people who think the dance didn't deserve 10s (or three 10s) explain their reasoning technically?

It's totally natural for some people not to like this dance, people have different tastes. So there is no shame in saying things like "I don't care if that dance was technically good, it didn't make me feel excited". Why do people have to try to prove that their taste is correct? And they never give any valid argument. They always go as far as "it didn't deserve a 10". Why?

You are given a vote (or as many as you can afford), if you don't like a dance you can not vote for that couple. Don't try to tell the judges what their votes should be. Specially if the only experience of dancing you have had is watching SCD.

Craig noted something not quite right; therefore, the dance routine did not deserve any tens.

Yes, but if you're looking for perfection then no one will get a 10 on Strictly. Mark's Argentine Tango was not a 10. Jill's Jive was not a 10. The contestants need another decade to get up to that standard.

For me, the reward of the 10 is if the dance is captivating enough that it makes you forget or miss the mistakes and just enjoy the technical ability on show and the ambience of it. In that sense, it's as much down to personal taste as it is the technical ability of the contestant.

I haven't gone as far to say that it didn't deserve a 10 but I do want to address what you said about judges and their votes as I think this part of my comment may have offended you and for that I'm sorry. What I meant from Len was he made such a huge fuss of not giving Harry more than an 8 this series that even Aliona was shocked at the 10 suddenly coming out so that's my reasoning for thinking that a 9 from him would have been sufficient. As for Bruno and Alesha, I fully agree with their giving 10s. His QS is his best and most convincing dance so far and their having given 10s already for dances they've done much worse is huge justification for his deserving a 10 from them. For me, I would have been more pleased him getting 10s if they're awarded to other couples for their dances relative to Harry's Tango which didn't deserve 10s imo or indeed if Harry hadn't got 10s so early on. It just seems they are more expected than anticpated and it shouldn't be like that.

I also used to dance myself and Tango is my best dance so I kind of use my own experience to judge that particular dance.

No it depends on each individual judges criteria
And shat they see and dont see. How often do we have one just say such and such was wrong only for another judge to disagree and say that was fine? Very often.

Len and Bruno clearly didnt notice the detail
Craig did or did notics and felt in balance with EVERYTHING else he got right it was inconsequential.

That was as close to flawless a QS as we have seen. Even a layman like me could see that.

Exactly. A 10 in this series is never going to be equivalent to a 10 in, for example, series 5, as the standard was so much higher back then, and marks started off much lower and stayed lower until 9s and 10s really were deserved.

Any other series Harry's QS may well have only scored 35/36 - but it was by far the best dance of this series so far, and miles above Jason's Charleston last night, therefore it had to get 39.

Personally I think it's one of the best Quicksteps Strictly's ever seen, so I think it fully deserves 39 regardless, but I could see how it could go down to 36-ish by nitpicking.

And the argument that it didn't deserve 10s because Craig spotted something not quite perfect implies that the judges are all judging on the same criteria. If that were true we'd only ever get a few specific scores: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36 and 40. They don't all judge on the same criteria, therefore there is variety in the scoring. Just because Craig found something to criticise does not preclude Alesha from giving a 10 as she's not juding so much on technique.

Apparently so, because he had the temerity to out dance the mancunian Chavette and her rather souless attempt at a tango

- I should have typed "in my opinion"

Wasn't that the dance where Alesha said that she just sat back and enjoyed it?

So Chelsee has one dance she didn't really do justice to emotion wise .....
Every dance from Harry has been like that -- no passion whatsoever.

I also think Alesha judges by each individual dance performance itself - I mean they all do but in relation to Craig, I think he does try to leave 10s until the end of the series to leave the celeb room to grow as a dancer in their technique especially. He always critiques in some way on technique and clearly everyone who reaches the final has grown in some way from week 1 which means if he hands out 10s willy nilly eariler in the series then the celeb has nothing to work for as they've already feel they've achieved so much but as Alesha seems to judge on the performance celebs and their pros also know that if they score highly with her in the first place then they have to up the ante in subsequent weeks in order to sustain their marks from her. For Bruno I think it depends on the celeb, i.e. for someone like Chelsee or Jason who have capability I think if their technique lets them down he'll mark them down but for someone say like Russell, if his performance would have let him down, he would have been marked down by Bruno. For Len, it's all about content and step placement and appropriateness for the dance itself i.e. if you start putting Samba moves into a Viennese Waltz (sounds silly but I couldn't think of another extreme) then he's not going to like it but if the dance looks relatively like the one you're supposed to be dancing, you're scoring at least 5 from Len but also may explain why his favourite score is 7.

Never 3 tens for me either.

Should have been 4 tens

In my experience viewers' favourite celebs are never overmarked, only the ones that aren't their favourites - then they become experts and pretend to know more than the judges.

To be fair it probably will be in 3 weeks. I think it will be a travesty if they don't reprise that dance in the final and they'll sort out whatever Craig's complaint was. As I said earlier, Craig critiqued it that way not to be mean to Harry but I guess it's his way of saying "that was great but if you were to do it in the future then this needs to happen and I'll be happy to give you top marks. If he would have given 10 last night then there would have been no chance, no reason to repeat it and they would have done another dance that Craig wouldn't necessarily give 10 to on finals night anyway.

Anyway, regardless of whether it should have been one 10 or 4 10s, the point of the matter is that we all have our opinions and we all are entitled to them and at the end of the day we know that every couple is going to score between 4 and 40 for every dance they do every week they are in. It's our job to then pick up the phone and vote if we like them. Personally, I'm not not going to vote for Harry just because Craig didn't give him a 10 and Len did, I'd vote for him if I liked him, which I do but not as much as Chelsee which is why she gets my vote - even if (and it's unlikely) she scores 4 next week. At the end of the day, the judges comment and score to guide and if we like it we know what to do, if not then the exact same rules apply. Us getting upset that Craig didn't give them a 10 or Len and Alesha and Bruno did isn't going to matter if the leaderboard is reversed due to the phone vote as Harry would be out as would any other celeb if they don't secure the public support as well.

Take the judges scores with a pinch of salt. When we watched in our house we did a pre scoring for the dances and the swingathon and guess what although ours were lower they were the same as the judges - all good fun.

If Anita's dance was two 8s then Harry's total score should've come to about 97.